On zombies, millennium falcons, and intellectual dishonesty.

25 April, 2011

Tonight I posted the following on Twitter:

Star wars: the space movie for people too stupid to get “2001”

This drew a couple of responses amounting to “OMG, that movie is a classic, how dare you disparage it.¹” In my mind they came from oatmeal characters, but that’s another post altogether.

Something it’s not

And it inspired me to at least briefly outline what I’ve found to be a huge intellectual cop-out with people and their guilty pleasures. Namely attempts to turn guilty pleasures into something more significant than they really are. I am talking about the attempt to say that something you watch for an explosion, or fight scene, or two clearly homosexual robots, is culturally relevant beyond being ‘awesome.’

The best example I know of for this was a time a former colleague tried to explain how zombie movies are a higher art form than other disaster movies because they almost always make a social commentary. He then went on to explain that zombies are symbols of mindless consumerism (the entire crux of the argument was that several of the movies have been set in shopping malls). After this deep intellectual discussion he then went on to describe a scene in some movie where a person kills a zombie by strangling it with his intestines.²

Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s pretty awesome.

But are these movies something deeper?

I say no.

I say they are guilty pleasures. And there is nothing wrong with that, I mean, I’m listening to some Wu-Tang as I write this, so I know something about guilty pleasures. They are what they are. But people feel the need to pseudo-intellectualize their guilty pleasures and make them things they are not. So when you say that “Hey Ma” (thanks iTunes shuffle for that example) is anything more than it is (which something that’s fun to listen to when you want to remember 2003) you cheapen things that might actually deserve accolades.

So, is a movie about spaceships, robots and big dogs that walk on two legs potentially awesome? Sure, but that doesn’t put it on par with Citizen Kane.

But what does that hurt

So, you might say, what difference does it make if I just watch Star Wars and keep it to myself? Well, the problem is that you might still see it as being intellectually stimulating, and since you do, you won’t challenge yourself to watch a real classic. Instead you’ll get into nerd-arguments about those stupid little teddy bear things and pretend that is making you smarter. And we already have enough dumb people around. We don’t need more.

And it’s dishonest to yourself. If the ‘deepest’ thing you can intellectually handle is Star Wars you have some bigger issues than why there is a planet full of those stupid teddy bear things. (Seriously, it’s like a snuggle fabric softener commercial).

So, let’s not kid ourselves

These movies may be awesome. They may be fun to watch, but putting them up on a pedestal under the banner “classic” is just wrong.

¹Ok, they didn’t use the word disparage.

²Or something like that. I think you get the point.